The plan, according to the report, was to get Barrett out in the open for the arrest.

The police report said agent Lowell Bruce Atkins strayed from that plan and cornered Barrett in the complex, where Barrett struggled for the agent's gun. The weapon fired and Barrett ran, only to be grabbed by Atkins and other officers a few feet away.

Ahrens heard the shots and ran through an outside corridor from the rear of the building, gun in hand, toward the arrest scene. Agents Thomas Fernandez, 28, and Douglas Harada, 32, saw someone approaching with a gun, knelt to a shooting crouch, aimed their pistols and yelled for her to stop.

When Ahrens kept running toward them, the two agents opened fire.

The report says agent David Small had told Ahrens and other agents that if Barrett was arrested, they should not run around the rear of the building, exposing themselves to possible cross fire. That was the route she took.

Fernandez and another inexperienced agent had been told to back up James Bolenbach and J. Loughney and not to shoot unless one of the experienced agents was wounded, Bolenbach told police.

Small said after the shooting that he had recognized Ahrens from her clothing. Bolenbach also recognized her clothing and general build, he told police.

He said he turned away, then looked back again when he saw her fall.

Ahrens was the first woman FBI agent killed in the line of duty and the first to be shot by fellow agents.

Barrett, an ex-convict, was wanted for questioning about the robbery of an armored-car courier in Las Vegas and the shooting of a Needles, Calif., policeman.